“Competition (…) encourages companies to offer consumers goods and services at the most favourable terms,” says the Commission’s website devoted to antitrust. On September 11 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that when charging cross-border interchange fees, Mastercard, the credit card giant, breached the EU antitrust law – a law area which seeks to establish fair
The Financial Times reported today that Jean-Claude Juncker, the incoming President of the European Commission, is considering creating an EU financial services directorate charged with regulating the City of London and ensuring stability in the region. It is believed the plan is to appoint a single commissioner to be responsible for a united financial services portfolio now
Arcaf, the National Association for Public Employee Pension Savers in France and member of BETTER FINANCE as part of FAIDER, alerted consumers to the insufficient solvency of the COREM pension fund. According to Arcaf, the French Mutual Pension Union which manages the COREM retirement savings products for 400,000 savers, sits on a hole of more
During a debate on the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) held on the 12th of May in Brussels, Guillaume Prache, Managing Director of BETTER FINANCE, denounced the fees that individual investors often have to pay in order to exercise their voting rights. These fees can be particularly high for cross-border voting
The BETTER FINANCE Conference on 28 March 2014 at the European Parliament Please find here the speech of Pervenche Berès, EMPL Committee Chair and MEP (S&D), former ECON Committee Chair.
On February 25 the European Parliament and Council agreed on draft EU legislation on investment funds. According to Sven Giegold, Green MEP, member of the EP’s ECON Committee and rapporteur for this legislation, this is a deal that will improve investor protection against reckless risk taking. The final agreement on the UCITS V Directive will oblige fund managers to take half
A study commissioned and released by the European Green Party shows that Europe’s largest banks are recipients of “implicit subsidies” to the tone of 234 billion in 2012, the equivalent of more than 10% of the European GDP of that year. Banks that are deemed “too big to fail” obtained subsidies from Member states since governments are
Starting with the new year, Greece assumed the EU Presidency for the next six months. In charge of the EU’s daily agenda, Greece will jointly decide policy directions and legislations with the European Parliament. Still in serious economic crisis and unemployment at its highest level, Greece takes charge of the European Union after its continued
On November 18, US federal authorities announced that the largest category of victims in the vast Ponzi scheme run by Bernard L. Madoff –those who lost cash trough accounts with various middleman funds – can benefit from a $ 2.35 billion fund to compensate for their losses. The Madoff Victim Fund, overseen by Special Master
On October 18, EuroFinUse and the Austrian Shareholder Association (IVA) held an international conference on “The Financial Repression of Savers and Investors”, in Vienna. International authorities from the private and public sectors discussed the alleged inevitability of Financial Repression and proposed solutions to face this issue. The event held at the Vienna Insurance Group was